Display Features 103 Dolls

GLASTONBURY — It's hard not to pick them up, to comb their hair and to fix their clothes.

After all, that's what dolls are for.

The 103 dolls on exhibit on Wednesday afternoons this month at the Welles-Shipman-Ward House in Glastonbury bring out an urge to be childlike.

``I love the way Barbara [Turgeon] has put them into scenes of their own,'' said Nancy Berlet, executive director of The Historical Society of Glastonbury, who provided some of the 100-year-old cribs and cradles for some of the dolls.

``It's quite impressive,'' Berlet said, referring to the special doll collection on loan at the 1755 museum house.

Turgeon, of Glastonbury, started collecting the dolls 15 years ago from various periods, countries, movies and television shows. She said she decided to loan them to the historical society because she wanted to weave in the dolls with the special features in the historic two-story Colonial house.

``I've been a collector of nostalgia all of my life. There is a need for people not to let go of old houses and old playthings,'' she said. ``Young children were nurtured by being able to play act.''

Pointing to a 1859 pasty-faced porcelain doll with rosy cheeks and glassy blue eyes sitting at a makeshift tea party in the bedroom on the second floor, Turgeon said, ``A lot of work went into these dolls.''

``I bought them for their faces. You can't get them like that anymore. The plastic doesn't look the same,'' Turgeon said.

Some of the dolls she has collected have plastic bodies. Others are made of fabric, oil cloth and leather, such as those in her Native American collection in the school room, also on the second floor.

Turgeon also has placed her Judy Garland doll, from the Wizard of Oz, in that room with a boy doll made in 1910.

In another bedroom, she placed a variety of dolls for the 1940s and 1950s, including those designed by Madam Alexander, a famous doll maker. She also has some 1894 ``dressing dolls,'' also known as paper dolls.

But not all the dolls are old enough to be considered antiques.

Turgeon has placed the Mickey Mouse Club dolls next to an Easy Bake Oven that was probably built in the 1950s. She also has an old Mattel Jack N' The Box with a clown face from that same period and even newer ethnic dolls from Alaska, Egypt and Israel.

Capt. Thomas Welles built the house, with hardwood floors and a huge fireplace stove in the kitchen, and he and his family lived there for about 40 years. The Shipman family lived there for more than 100 years. The Ward family lived there from the 1920s to the 1950s. They were all prominent farmers or ship builders in Glastonbury, who also played significant roles in government, Berlet said. The historical society obtained the house in 1963 with the help of Berdena Hart Ward, a society member.